◊ Malan

Lets assume that many of us were inspired by this thread to finally get around to trying arena in a more serious manner. I've got a grand total of 78 resilience - S2 weapon, S1 shoulders, cloak, pvp trinket and the CoT trinket. 2v2 with a frost mage, a la Push's suggestion. Rogues, regardless of who the other teammate is, are brutal right now, absolutely tearing me apart. Suggestions for dealing with rogue/anything teams?

Obviously rogue/healer is just going to be damn hard to beat. But even rogue/dps is a frigging hurt box. We end being able to kill either the rogue or the other DPS, but the end result is that I'm dead and my mage partner has to finish the fight, usually with both opponents still up.

~Rocks, coming to a shaman near you in the next expansion~

 

Duilliath

Beyers - I use Outfitter for the Shield / Weapon swap. You can create an outfit that consists of only a shield (or healing weapon + shield if you prefer) and then assign a hot key for it. Hitting the hot key again switches it back to the previous outfit. No need to macro that one really. Outfitter is useful to create a specific PvP/PvE outfit too, without having to go through all your bags. There's a few similar addons that I assume can pretty much all do the same trick.

--

Malan, have you switched in a Shield when a rogue opens on you ? The mage might be able to freeze him in place long enough for you to get out. Similarly, Poly on the rogue might give you enough time. I have Poison Cleansing totem hotkeyed specifically for rogues.

Other than that, more resilience will help ya live through the initial stun. I'd think you can 'waste' the trinket on kidney shot if you're afraid of dying, but I'm not 100% sure Grounding Totem will take the blind. Blind has a very short range though.

 

jlavarj

Welcome to the existensial angst that is arena enhancement, Malan. There really isn't a lot you are going to be able to do against a rogue until you have the stam/resil to live through a full stun lock cycle. For me that happened around 10k hp and 300 resilience.

Since you are in a 2 dps (this doesn't work as well when you are running with a healer because the decrease in damage gives the healer more time for mana drains and cc), if the rogue gets on you, go into full survival mode while he blows his cooldowns (Adrenaline rush, cloak of shadows, etc) while your mage cc's the other target and puts damage on the rogue and pressures him into blowing cloak of shadows. If you are getting hit by a ranged, dps, drag the rogue behind a pillar or into a room so that you are only being hit by one source of dps at a time. Once CoS is up, it should be a lot easier to kite and snare the rogue for both of you and you can go back to DW. While going through a string of rogue teams, I also found it very useful to use the pocket watch trinket out of kara instead of a second resil trinket and I'd blow that as soon the rogues start blowing cooldowns.

 

◊ Malan

Part of it is probably just my inexperience. One game that sticks out in my mind was a warlock/rogue team. The rogue was stealthed long enough that we finally just took our chances and went after the lock. The moment I switched out the shield for DW I was stunlocked and died rapidly. I believe I broke the kidney shot but he blew evasion/Cloak and just continued to tear me apart.

On another fight we had a rogue at 1% health for over a minute, I'm not sure if it was that cheat death bug or what, but nothing we did was bringing him down (and he had no healer).

As you said, part of it is just the resilience, part of it is probably not being sure how to deal with the rogue team in the first place. Keep the shield on the entire time?

~Rocks, coming to a shaman near you in the next expansion~

 

jlavarj

If you draw a team with a stealther, and the other dps is just waiting, I like to put down my totems and hang out in ghost wolf form out of LoS of the other dps. If they are content to wait 90 seconds, the true sight crystals pop up and then it's pretty easy to avoid the opener by the rogue.

The cooldowns a rogue (depending on spec) has blown that you want to keep track of are:

Adrenaline Rush
Cloak of Shadows
Sprint
Blind

You want to minimize the effects of these when they do blow them, and force them to blow them early. If your mage can keep the rogue chilled and you can keep crippling poison off of yourself, the rogue is going to have to blow CoS and Sprint to keep on you. Where you resil and stam are, I'd use your pvp trinket to break a kidney shot since you might not live through it to eat a blind. The shield is key for living through adrenaline rush.

 

Barell

I have a little bit of luck against rogues. Figured I would reply with some of the things i have found helpful. I think Malan your biggest problem is your resilience. I think for 2v2 I would personally gem/gear more for survival than dps. Especially running 2 dps.

Obviously a shield is mandatory. I usually start against rogues with a shield. I have seen some people spec for improved shields if they are running 2v2 just for rogue/warrior survivability. Also maxing out Anticipation.

I also like to start in GW, so unless they are running the newish version of Proximo they are not sure what spec you are. And GW allows so you can't be sapped. That will make you the target they open up on, but with good gear a plan it might be a good thing.

Grace of Air totem helps, every little bit of dodge is better than none, and obviously poison cleansing totem. God I hope the patch notes are real and tremor and poison go down to 3 seconds!

If you are not trying to attack, just survive, facing a wall can help. That way the rogue cannot gouge you.

Don't trinket the cheap shot, need to wait for the kidney shot. And I would not trinket anything less than a 3 point kidney shot (4 or more seconds). You need to be able to survive that long.

As for facing rogues in the arena. I would start a little spread out from your mage. They are going to sap one of you. If you are in GW that forces it to be the mage. If he is far enough away from you when he trinkets the sap, he will be out of range of the blind. Then he might be able to get a polymorph off to reduce the pressure on you. Rogue would trinket the poly, but that has bought you 2 seconds probably. Can work on running away then. Frost shocking the rogue as you go. This all depends really on who there partner is. Double dps such as 2 rogues, I doubt there is much you can do.

But one other thing I came across was an interesting macro that might help. I have not tried it yet, but I got it from a good source, so it should work.

/tar a
/tar b
/tar c etc, all the way down to z. What this does is targets every player in the area whose names start with that beginning letter. Spam this at the beginning of the match. Obviously you are you partner will be targeted first due to proximity, but if there names do not start with the same letter, it will call them up on your proximo very early. Sometimes you can even catch that rogue who was slow to stealth off the start. Lets you know what your facing.

Hope this helps some. I might have reiterated some stuff but i think so much of it boils down to gear when facing rogues unfortunately.

 

◊ Malan

Yah spacing out from the mage is definitely something we realized we needed to do. We were sticking together tightly and it was just too easy to sap one of us and unload on the other instantly.

~Rocks, coming to a shaman near you in the next expansion~

 

panny

Shaman are entirely too squishy with low resilence. Even at high resilence, you'll get blown up fairly quickly if you're positioning isn't good. Shaman have very few tools to turn a match around. While other classes can vanish or CC on intervene away, we really only have our burst to rely on. Due to this, the most vital thing is to take the initative and keep your opponents offguard as much as possible. In 2v2, against stealth teams, this can really really hard. My advice is to use PvP trinkets early break those saps and KSs, even if it opens you up to blind since you won't even get to that stage if you don't put up enough pressure for them to use it.

My advice is to stay out of line of sight with totems down in ghost wolf form with a shield. I keep down rank 1 Magma, Poison Cleansing, Earthbind, and Grounding at the start of a match for stealthers. Assuming he opens on you, your partner should rotate poly on the other team. CloS can be a problem, but it only lasts for 5 seconds. While this is happening, mash Poison Cleansing as much as possible so you can move fast enough to either keep out of LoS of the other opponent or, if the non-rogue is easier to kill, get in range to start damage. Smart use of CC/snares on the part of the mage should let you escape a Rogue.

Also, remember that it's always an option to just stay in 1h/shield.

 

• thevidon

I will almost never do this, If there is a stealthed player I will always assume its a rogue. As you have found out, we are rogues favorite target since we cant really escape. I will just start in on the caster with 1h/shield with the expectation that the stunlock is coming.

Right now I am grinding for honor to get the S1 shield, just to help with rogues in arena. I hate having to spend 15k honor just to get some help with one class in arena, but it is enough of an issue that I think its worth it. You really need to up your resilience level - they just tear us up at low resilience.

 

jwwpua

Right now I'm using Mongoose/Executioner, but I'm considering Mongoose/Mongoose.

Lightning speed isn't up enough to satisfy me. When it's up, the crit increase is very noticeable to me. I think I'd rather crit more often (which is already tough to do in arenas b/c of resilience) because it triggers so many buffs plus provides better burst damage.

Executioner is nice, but doesn't put any "scare" into the victim as a dual wielder. The hits are a little harder, but crits are what scare people

Any opinions on this?

 

panny

Executioner absolutely murders Cloth. Crits tend to proc alot of annoying affects (Focused Will, Enrage, Natural Perfection) but good ones too (Flurry, UR, Shamanistic Focus). Also, remember that Resilence not only reduced crit chance, but also crit damage.

Executioner does more than make you hit a little harder, you hit alot harder. Combined with Purge and a few bits of ArPen, it makes a huge difference in your burst. Mongoose does give dodge/armour, which can be useful too. I don't think there's a great difference in effectiveness between the two, and I wouldn't bother reenchanting for it.

 

Juli

Any comments on this?:
The World of Warcraft Armory
The World of Warcraft Armory

Appears to be a 2200+ enhance shaman on Whirlwind 2v2 playing with a BM hunter. Also note that he is using a 2h rather than DW. And unless armory is incorrect in showing him as not having a 3v3/5v5 team, it is very unlikely that he has enough points for a MH+OH set as well, or that he ranked up as a different spec.

edit: the s1 cloak and trinket selection also amuse me and indicate that he probably HATES PvE

 

jwwpua

Karl 2v2's as Resto with a BM hunter. He chose to buy enhancement gear, and he posted a video of him 1-shotting undergeared scrubs in BG's.

 

Juli

Well that's disappointing. And I wanted 2handers to be good so badly; they are so much cooler.

I shouldn't really be surprised by this though, considering I did the same thing with shadow gear on my priest as disc spec. Ah well, guess I'll keep my eyes peeled for more underdogs fighting the good fight.

 

Taowth

This is my personal opinion on executioner but I think its really bad for pvp. The jury is still out on pve but commetns from the post on it put it neck and neck with mongoose. However remember thats against staionary targets with loads of buffs and such, in pve gear where you'll have substantially more AP/crit than pvp gear.
The last time i averaged out the numbers (tested against someone wearing armor, then taking off ~900 of it), under optimal conditions, meaning 100% flurry uptime on 2.6 weapons, and getting a main hand WF proc every 3 seconds of the 15 second duration, not counting crits, the total damage gain was around 650 damage. Thats around the dmg of 1 1/2 white crit hits (meaning the extra from the double). And thats under perfect conditions. I greatly prefer the agi and the haste from a mongoose proc to that.
Dont take my word for it though, do your own testing in the damage gained against a target with 850 less armor and then do the math for your own averaged damage.



In regards to Malan, I dont play much 2s because I vomit over the 10 minute queue times. I have so much other stuff I can do that waiting 10 minutes for a 1-2 minute game vs likely the same team I just played 13 minutes ago, that I dont even bother. However from the few i've done and just general pvp experience i'll lay out my advice.

For 2s with a 2nd dps on your team, anytime theres a stealth you have to put on your shield and play defensivly. Poison cleansing, grounding, earthbind (even against lock/war partners, start with eb) and constantly refresh magma rank 1, it can sometimes catch them though not usually thanks blizzard. What you're going to want to do is take the cheap shot, trinket the kidney and immediatly pop SR and then water shield or lightning shield whichever you prefer, for the reasons i've mentioned in an earlier post, but for the added benifit in 2s is sometimes your shield animation will cover up the buff animation, and if you're behind a pillar their other guy may not even see it go up right away.
Pop Bloodlust after that, the whole time while you're side strafing to get away (keeping your front to the rogue if he's mutilate), then from there on spam poison cleansing to get away, as well as refreshing earthbind on the rogue. Your mage partner will start off sheeping the rogue to give you some time and then lay into him with frostbolts for the slow and hopefully a frostbite. Have the mage use his pet's nova to force either a trinket if it wasnt used on sheep or a sprint.
This should have bought you a little bit of distance, and from here out its the mage's priority to take the rogue out and slow the crap out of him, using novas defensivly for you. Stuns will be an issue but if your mage is good enough he should be able to mutilate the rogue in time. CC laid onto his partner, and if its a healing partner your main job is to earth shock heals while getting away via poison cleansing spam. Save your war stomp for when he uses cloak, to take pressure off you in the time where your mage cant slow him. If you can get a good distance away, try to heal yourself, or pillar kite if you feel that will help.
If the 2nd dps is ranged use line of sight to your advantage and take as little damage as you can from it. This can be hardest on blades edge, but if you have good communication you could still run up and down ramps with your mage positioning himself accordingly to still dps.

One last thing, for 3s ghost wolf isnt bad because you may not always be primary target but i still prefer mounted up. However for 2s, you're 95% going to be the first target, and any smart rogue wont sap you in the first place. Why not? because he's just going to break it anyways to lay into you, so why would he sap you when he could sap your partner and make them waste their trinket to come to your aid, its really bad in 2s to sit there doin nothing while your partner is getting whailed on. So purposefully dont ghost wolf, invite the sap onto yourself, if you get sapped that means the rogue is close and your mage can and probably should rank 1 blizzard on top of you. In the meantime your mage should be rank 1 arcane explosioning for himself, spontaniously drinking to recover mana loss for 1-2 ticks before moving again if you want to risk that.
Call out you got sapped and watch the rogue cry when blizzard pulls him out.
Lastly, NEVER trinket sap unless, and this is the ONLY time you want to, if you see the rogue after you get sapped in stealth, dont hesitate for a second, trinket and flame shock him. When stealthers lose the opener they lose alot of damage and control time. Yes he can just come up and gouge you and try to run or blind you and run to restealth, but your mage should be on him in an instant. Dont forget that cheap shot yeilds 2 combo points, and most rogues dont do a 5 point kidney, they usually do 4 point in the opening start, depending on situations. If you take away the 2 points from CS it'll be much longer before you actually do get kidneyd, and the initial damage is mitigated a bit because you can pop SR/BL before their kidney where you cant dodge etc.

 

The Omen

in my opinion you should just play what spec you like blizzard will eventually get around to buffing enhancement for pvp what i suggest is play with friends because atm arena is way to Gimmicky meaning that PMR and stuff like that have clear advantages against most setups so play for fun and hope we get buffs in next patch

 

Experiment

My own personally preference for PvP enchantments is on Mongoose. Exec is good, but so much of the Enhancement Shaman gear has AP built into it already. Helm, Leggings, Chest, S3 Ring, etc.

Against targets with much more armor then the stacked gear will negate easily, I'd rather keep the chance at faster attacks and crit. I'm mostly thinking about Paladins in this case, who normally run with Concentration Aura, and you need all the pushback chances you can get. The groups I run against lately armor heavy, Paladin / Paladin / Warrior.

Quick question, has anyone decided that keeping the Engineering goggles for the stealth detection outweighs the DPS difference on the S3 Helm? Assuming you're an Engineer of course. God knows we need all the help we can get to stop that initial rush from a Rogue. With my Warlock I know it's worth it, but not sure for A Shaman.

Just as a reminder when you start against another team and can't see one due to stealthing, check what buffs they have active. Sometimes it's a NE Priest, sometimes it's a Druid, it's not always a Rogue. When I do choose to play my Shaman for Arena's I watch for the buffs on the other team before I worry about switching to a shield / etc to prep for the pain.

Random sometimes helpful tip: Sometimes people on the other team will still have their members targeted comming out of the starting gate. I normally take Proximo, and click on one of them, and then press assist, to see if they're targeting a druid / rogue so I can catch them before the stealth.

 

jlavarj

The engineering goggles have more AP, Crit, and hit on them than the s3 helm. I think the goggles count as more dps than the S3 helm, unless I'm missing something.

The value of stealth detect added by them isn't much, but I did slap a flame shock on a few rogues while wearing them than I manage to do now.

 

panny

This is a good thing. ArPen has a greater effect the closer you get someone to 0. If you drop someone to 0 armour from Executioner, it's something like a 7.5% damage increase.

How are you getting pushback on Pallies? They have 100% pushback protection from talents + aura.

 

Kiaela

Im currently playing arena in a 2vs2 with a frost mage @1650ish rating(its quite hard to overcome the rogue infested low bracket), but every other combination of classes isnt a very big problem. A enhancement shaman friend of mine is at the moment 1945 rated in 2vs2 so its quite possible to reach 2k'ish rating with this combination. We both follow the same socket philosphy sta/crit/ap. We are doing arena with 11,3k hp and 390 resilince unbuffed without a shield at about 30,88 crit.

I am also playing 3vs3 with warri/pala at 1927 rating sometimes swapping me vs a resto shaman for some dual healer action.

5on5 im playing with Warri/ Felguard/Destro Lock/Druid/Paladin currently at 2047 rating (Shoulders inc).

In every bracket I start the match with 1 hand+Shield, in 3vs3 and 5vs5 I also stay a bit behind my team so they have to go through my whole team to reach me if they want to focus me.

Some macros I found useful when doing arena

#showtooltip Shamanistic Rage(Rank 1)
/use [nomodifier] Bloodlust Brooch;(for pve)
/stopcasting
/cast [nomodifier] Shamanistic Rage;
/use [modifier:alt] Medallion of the Alliance;
/use [modifier:ctrl] 14 (thats the lower trinket slot i usually have battlemaster in there)

#showtooltip [nomodifier:alt] Earth Shock(Rank 8)
#showtooltip [modifier:alt] Earth Shock(Rank 1)
/cast [nomodifier:alt] Earth Shock(Rank 8)
/cast [modifier:alt,target=focus] Earth Shock(Rank 1)

with alt+key shocks ur focus target with a Rank 1 Earthshock

#show Purge
/cast [nomodifier,target=mouseover,harm,nodead,exists] [modifier:alt,target=focus,harm,nodead,exists] [nomodifier,target=target,harm,nodead,exists] [nomodifier,target=target,harm,nodead,exists] [nomodifier,target=targettarget,harm] Purge

Purges your mouseover target, then your target, if your target is friendly the target of your target and with alt your focus target

/focus [nomodifier,target=mouseover,exists]; focus [nomodifier,target=target]
/clearfocus [modifier:alt]

Your mouseover target or target as a focus target, alt clears the selection

/stopmacro [target=focus,noexists] [noexists]
/target focus
/targetlasttarget
/focus target
/targetlasttarget

Makes your focus target your target and your target the focus target

/equipslot 16 Vengeful Gladiator's Cleaver (insert mh weapon name here)
/equipslot 17 Vengeful Gladiator's Chopper (insert oh weapon name here)
/equipslot 17 Merciless Gladiator's Shield Wall (insert shield here)

swaps from dw to shield and back with just 1 button press

If you want to check the armory profiles:
The World of Warcraft Armory
The World of Warcraft Armory

 

◊ Malan

Won't that first macro you made fail any time that the bloodlust brooch is on cooldown?

~Rocks, coming to a shaman near you in the next expansion~